Unknowable Knowns

Science is about understanding the universe and everything in it. Examples of scientific questions are: Will the universe expand forever, or will it collapse? Will there be major global changes due to human activities, and what will be the effects on earth’s ocean levels, and on agriculture and biodiversity? Note that there are, a priori, no mathematical models that accompany these questions. Science uses mathematics, but it is also very different from mathematics. The unknown and the unknowable form the boundary of science. Here are examples of questions for which the answers are today unknown.

How do physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience? That is, explain consciousness. Can the healthy, active lives of humans be significantly prolonged by, say, a factor of two or three? How did life originate on earth? Will the universe expand forever, or will it collapse? Can we develop a grand unified theory of the fundamental physical laws? Why do fundamental constants, such as the speed of light, have their particular values? Is there life elsewhere in the universe? Is it intelligent? How do children acquire language?

For which of these are the answers unknowable? We cannot prove scientific unknowability. That can only be done in mathematics. This is sometimes not understood, even by professionals.

The unknown is met in the familiar but lives in the surreal. You slip through a hidden portal to a parallel universe. It was a Hall of Mirrors reflecting the distorted reality of a tangled mind. The dark and dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers… Far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter… the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and strange lurks, as much wrapped in mystery as ever. When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly. The unknown was making itself known. Like a spectre or a paper tiger, it had no substance or claws. If you had reached out and touched it, your hand would have passed right through. You didn’t dare. What once seemed solid was just a shaky facade held together with spit and string. You held your breath so it wouldn’t topple. When it did, it turned to dust and blew away.

We have dragged our collective hairy knuckles through the aeons of deep time and uncertainty to the median goal of what you see in the rearview mirror every day. There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

In UFOlogy and Parapsychology, there is another classification of the unknown, called the “Unknowable Knowns” This is defined by people believing in things they could not possibly know to be true.

We know things are true because they can be proven to be so. ‘Proven’ is defined by – to demonstrate the truth or existence of (something) by evidence or argument. Using that mental yardstick we have climbed out of fear and brutality of the Dark Ages, waltzed through the Rennaisance, and mechanized throughout the Industrial Revolution. Scientific curiosity and unrelenting logic are wholly responsible for all that we see when we consider what is ‘cutting edge’.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between disjointedly is UFOlogy.

The unknown is always encountered in the midst of the known. It manifests within what is usual and familiar and hides there in plain sight. To many, the unknown is the serpent in paradise.

In UFOlogy as in any other field where truths and facts are nearly nonexistent people do some interesting mental gymnastics to deal with that inconvenient truth. Do they learn to fly or do they call St. Patrick? Nope. They make up volumes and volumes of nonsensical bullshit. Just look at what passes as news today in UFOlogy. Mr UFO (Timothy Beckley) has seminars where he highlights information he received from time travellers. Hey, Tim, were all the Bashir channellers busy? Dr Stephen Greer spouts promises of free energy and first contact with a vast pantheon of imaginary intelligences, all for a high-priced ticket of admission. All without a single watt of energy generated, all without any scruples or sense of common decency when he looks the world in the eyes and spews his nonsense. Stephen Basset is super, extremely sure, bet the farm convinced that Disclosure is going to happen this year. Even though he has said the exact same thing every year for the last 20. For some strange reason, those two moronic fraudsters are respected in this field. It seems like the more idiotic, short-sighted, and vapid you are the more popular you will be. If you listen really carefully, right now! Listen! Somewhere someone is writing yet another Roswell book.

Almost ALL of UFOLogy falls into this ‘unknowable knowns’ category. There really is ZERO evidence of any kind to answer any of the really important questions. I, of course, do not refer to the many, many sound professional UFO investigators that scour government archives for that one piece of government UFO gold. Many intellectual nuggets have been panned out over the last 60 years. But every single one of them is trying to do one thing. That is to convince the world that UFO/UAP’s are real phenomena. Not just an unknown but otherworldly unknown. The quest to find the smoking gun where the government admits interest and intervention into the enigma. In my opinion, this smoking gun has come along many times. Yes, the government has an interest in ufos. They overfly our most secret and important installations without consequence. Apparently, they can perform aerial manoeuvres that we can only dream of. Nothing we shoot at them has any effect at all. UFO’s/UAP’s are a wild card factor in which the powers-that-be can not allow. They really can’t protect us if the chips were down. This is why they care and why all the official ridicule. The UFO’s/UAP’s were not shooting planes out of the sky or melting the faces off of Congress so a wait and see attitude was put forth. They care greatly but know very little.

For me, all this is fine and dandy but I know they are real. Many people know through direct experience that something is afoot. No government announcement needed. Even if they did announce officially that they are real… Is anybody going to really care? OK, so they are real what else do you know? The true answer is not much.

There is ZERO credible evidence to answer the other big questions; Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? Or, why Earth for example. These are the questions of substance, not just the inquiry ‘are they real’.

It is the current crap that passes as answers to those questions that I really have a problem with. Since there is no extraordinary evidence we can’t make extraordinary claims. Well, many people make extraordinary claims without any thought let alone any evidence. 99% of UFOlogy in this current and dying incarnation is touting nothing but unknowable knowns. Think about that and question the sources of your information carefully. The best and most exciting revelations are still to come in UFOlogy… Actually, they have not even started yet. The truth and the reality that exposes itself to us will be ultimately more entertaining and educational than any new age guru can imagine. Don’t diminish and anthropomorphize the unknown, it will be stranger and more indifferent to us than we can imagine.

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